Troubled bookseller Barnes & Noble has bought Microsoft’s stake in Nook as part of a cunning plan to spin off its loss-making e-reader and digital content division. Barnes & Noble shares closed down 5.4 percent on the New York Stock Exchange after the company also reported a much-weaker-than-expected quarterly profit, due to lower sales of Nook devices. The company estimated the value of the cash and share deal at about $125 million.

Nook, launched in 2009, enjoyed initial success but has ended up costing Barnes & Noble a fortune as it was unable to keep pace with Amazon’s Kindle. Microsoft invested $300 million in Barnes & Noble's Nook e-reader in 2012 to gain a foothold in the fast-growing e-books market but it proved to be a poisoned chalice.

Barnes & Noble said in June it would spin off its Nook Media business, which includes college bookstores, to focus on its retail book business. Microsoft will lose money on its initial investment, but will also be spared any future payments to fund Nook, which were running at about $21 million per quarter.

Under the agreement announced on Thursday, Microsoft will have the right to receive about 22.7 percent of total proceeds of Nook's digital business, which excludes the college bookstores, if it is sold in the next three years.

Although it seemed as if Barnes & Noble was ready to throw in the towel and ditch the tablet market, a leaked benchmark suggests it is still working on at least one product.

The Barnes & Noble BNTV800 showed up in GFX Bench and it appears to feature a 1620x1020 screen and a Tegra 4 processor. We are still not sure about the size, but given the resolution and designation it appears to be an 8-incher.

The device was running Android 4.2.2 when it was benched, although it is unclear whether it will launch with 4.2.2 or a newer version of Android.

Barnes and Noble has announced that it will stop making Nook tablets and switch to a partnership model that will result in co-branded tablets with yet to be announced third party manufacturers.

The announcement came during the Barnes and Noble 2013 annual financial results report and while the Nook business managed to generate revenue of US $108 million for the last quarter and US $776 million for the full year, it is still a decrease of 34 percent for the quarter and 16.8 percent for the year. Device sales declined during Q4 due to lower demand.

Company announced that it plans to significantly reduce its losses in the Nook segment by limiting risks associated with manufacturing. While it will still continue to design eReading devices it will switch to a partnership model for manufacturing in order to compete in the color tablet market. Barnes and Noble plans to continue to develop Simple Touch and Glowlight products in house but the tablet line will be co-branded with yet to be announced third party manufacturers.

The currently available Nook HD and Nook HD+ tablets will still be available but it looks like future products are out of the question, at least until B&N manage to score a really good partnership deal.

Barnes & Noble has announced that its Nook HD and Nook HD+ tablets are now available in the UK, at Nook.co.uk site and some other retailers/e-tailers. The new Nook HD and Nook HD+ are ready to crash Amazon's, Google's and, of course, Apple's tablet parade in the UK.

As we wrote back when it was announced in the States, the Nook HD features a 7-inch 1440x900 HD LCD touchscreen that translates to 243ppi and uses a Texas Instruments OMAP 4470 dual-core chip clocked at 1.3GHz. Starting with a £159 price tag for the 8GB model, the Nook HD is competitively priced, especially due to the fact that it has a microSD card slot, a critical feature for some consumers.

The 9-inch 1920x1080 (256ppi) Nook HD+ on the other hand does not have many competitors and it is certainly quite unique. Clocked at 1.5GHz and paired up with 1GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage, it can certainly hold its ground and even cope with Full HD video content. The Nook HD+ starts at £229 in the UK.

Both tablets will, of course, have access to the Barnes & Noble service including Nook Apps, Books, Channels and Newsstand. In case you want to share them, B&N also threw in Nook Profiles that give you an ability to log in with different profiles.

In case 8GB is not enough internal storage for you, the 7-inch Nook HD is also available in 16GB flavor for £189. The same thing goes for the Nook HD+, so if 16GB is not enough, the 32GB version is available for £269. You can find them both over at uk.Nook.com.

Following yesterday's announcement of Google's Nexus 7, budled with US $25 credit for Google Play store, Barnes & Noble decided to offer a US $30 Barnes & Noble gift card for those that purchase the Nook Tablet 16GB.

In addition to the new limited free US $30 gift card offer, Barnes & Noble did not hesitate to brag about "advanced VividView touchscreen, largest digital library, wide selection of shows and music, light weight and incredible battery life of its tablet. Of course, we would rather see the price of US $249 go down to US $199 but US $30 gift card is still something, at least if you have your eyes on Nook.

This amazing limited time offer, as Barnes & Noble calls it, will end on July 8th and is available at all Barnes & Noble stores and Nook.com website.

A few months ago Amazon and Barnes & Noble introduced two relatively inexpensive 7-inch tablets with rather impressive results. The Kindle Fire is already the best selling Android tablet on the market. Although most manufacturers and consumers alike still stick to the 10-inch form factor, dirt cheap 7-inchers seem to be the flavor of the month.

We got our hands on one of them, and it’s not the Kindle or Nook. Lenovo’s Ideapad A1 was also introduced late last year, but unlike the overhyped Kindle and Nook it got a lukewarm reception. Unlike the competition, the A1 is a run of the mill Android tablet with Android Marketplace and a pretty straightforward Gingerbread UI, with only minor tweaks on top.

Before we start we need to get something out of the way. The Ideapad A1 sells for €150+, so it is quite a bit cheaper than the competition. Of course, in designing such a cheap device Lenovo had to cut some corners, so there are a few compromises worth mentioning.

It is powered by a Texas Instruments OMAP 3622 chip, a 1GHz Cortex A8 part with PowerVR SGX530 graphics. Not exactly state of the art in this day and age, but it gets the job done. It has 512MB of RAM and 16GB of built-in storage, but it also features a microSD slot for expansion. Basically it has the processor and memory of a previous generation Android smartphone, but it also packs generous storage.

Unlike the Kindle Fire, the A1 has a 3MP camera along with a VGA front facing camera. It also has a volume rocker and rotation lock switch, something the Kindle Fire does without. A proper offline GPS receiver is also on board, so the A1 can double as a pretty good navigation device as well. The capacitive 7-inch 1024x600 screen is the main issue here, but we will get to it later.

Design and Build Quality

As for the looks, Lenovo is offering the A1 in four colour options: piano black, white, pink and blue. We think the white version is the one to go for. Overall the design is pretty good. It won’t turn heads but it’s pretty sleek, especially if you factor in the price. On the aesthetic side, our only complaint is the size of Lenovo logos, both at the front and at the back. They are just a bit too big for our liking.

So, Lenovo did not pinch pennies in the design department.

The Ideapad A1 feels like a pretty solid lump of hardware. Build quality is pretty good for such an affordable device. Although there are no fancy materials like magnesium or aluminium, the all-plastic A1 does not look or feel cheap. It measures 195x124x11.7mm and it weighs in at just 400 grams.

The microSD slot feels a tad flimsy and it is not very easy to access, but in this price range we reckon most users will stick with internal storage anyway.

It would be unfair to compare it to high end tablets, but for €150, the Ideapad A1 looks and feels great.

Input Devices, Display

The A1 ships with a custom preinstalled Go keyboard, which is a tad better than the stock Android 2.3 keyboard, but it is nothing to write home about. Typing in landscape or portrait is a breeze, but this has more to do with the compact 7-inch form factor than the keyboard itself. Of course, the beauty of Android is that you can download any keyboard you like, but the Go keyboard gets the job done.

There is no haptic feedback support, not even on the three navigation buttons under the screen. On a separate note, these buttons can be pretty annoying. For some reason the backlight powers down just a couple of seconds after you touch them, rendering them invisible. Of course, with time users will get used to this awkward glitch, but Lenovo should have included some backlight controls for the buttons. [Gods, you have big fingers. Ed]

And now we get to the elephant in the room, the display. Of course, it supports multitouch, but it is limited to two-finger gestures. There is no pinch to zoom in the gallery app, although pinch to zoom works pretty well in the browser. However, our main beef with the screen is not touch input, which worked quite well, but display quality.

Of course, the A1 does not feature an IPS display like high-end 10-inch tablets and we were not expecting any miracles. The resolution is more than adequate, as it ends up with more pixels per inch than an iPad. We could also overlook relatively low brightness, but the real issue here has more to do with viewing angles than anything else.

The viewing angles are so limited that you will see colours start to fade and wash out even at slight angles. Viewing angles usually aren’t a deal breaker on tablets or hand-held devices in general, but in this case they are a major issue. In fact, the angles are so limited that you are likely to get some fade even when you are looking straight at the screen in portrait mode. The reason for this is quite simple. Our eyes are about 8cm or 3 inches apart and the angles are so limited that you’ll often see two different images, with varying degrees of fade.

It might be hard to explain what I’m on about, so here’s a photoshopped demonstration. Note the differences in contrast and color rendition between the shots, captured from two different points, less than 10cm apart. Basically it is like a 3D screen done wrong.

It might be a dirt cheap tablet, but Lenovo really should have gone for a better screen.

Ergonomics, OS, Everyday Use

The layout is pretty straightforward and there is really not much to talk about here.

The right hand side features the volume rocker and screen rotation lock switch. The rocker feels very sturdy and, of course, the rotation lock comes in handy.

The left side features... nothing.

At the bottom you will find a microSD slot, micro USB connector, status LED and single mono speaker. Audio quality is average, the sound is somewhat louder than on a smartphone, but it is barely adequate for i.e. video. This pretty much applies to all tablets.

The power button and a standard 3.5mm headphone jack are on top. There is no HDMI output and there would really be no point in having it. Due to hardware limitations, the A1 can’t play HD content anyway.

The 1GHz A8 processor with SGX530 cannot cope with HD and it is pretty easy to push the small Lenovo to its limits. Bear in mind that we are talking about previous generation hardware, running an equally outdated OS. In spite of its limitations, the A1 still manages to deliver a decent user experience. It will allow you to watch YouTube or any sort of SD video, but it starts dropping frames as soon as you go for 720p, while 1080p is off the table completely. The Android 2.3 browser still does a pretty good job and although it might not deliver the smoothness of last generation dual-core devices, it soldiers on and manages quite well.

Angry Birds run just fine, as do some other games, even Osmos HD and Air Attack HD, which are quite a bit more demanding than Angry Birds. Of course, the A1 does not have enough muscle to run games designed for dual-cores with the latest graphics cores.

Lenovo did not go overboard with customizations. In fact, aside from the keyboard and huge Lenovo widget at the home screen, it is pretty much a vanilla Gingerbread experience. Installing another launcher can be helpful, and we found that GO Launcher is a tad snappier. Overall, the A1 is not fast, but we wouldn’t call it laggy either.

There is not a lot of bloatware, either. Lenovo ships the A1 with eBuddy, Documents to Go 3, Lenovo Market and a few other apps, including NavDroyd. We have to stress that offline GPS is a redeeming feature as far as we are concerned. You won’t get it even on much pricier tablets, let alone a €150 device.

Although 7-inch tablets are often looked down upon as nothing but a cheaper alternative to high end 10-inchers, their compact size and weight can also come in handy. For example, people who consume a lot of e-books might find that a 7-incher is a pretty good choice. They weigh less than 10-inch tablets and the screen size will suffice, as a 7-inch screen is roughly the size of a paperback page. Navigation might be another example, as you can fit a 7-incher on a car dashboard with relative ease.

Unsurprisingly, the cameras aren’t impressive either. The 3MP main camera, sans LED, delivers average photos in daylight and it can’t cope with poor lighting. It will come in handy for augmented reality apps and it can capture VGA video, which looks decent. The front facing 0.3MP unit is equally unimpressive, but we can’t say we expected anything better. In all fairness, the Kindle Fire does not have any cameras, so it’s really a one-horse race.

Benchmarks, Battery Life, Wrap Up

As you’ve probably guessed by now, the A1 does not do well in benchmarks. We pitted it against the old Nexus S, the world’s first Gingerbread device and LG’s Optimus 2X, the first dual-core phone, also running Gingerbread.

Even the Nexus outpaces the A1, with a wide margin in graphics tests. The Nexus features a similar CPU core, but it has SGX 540 graphics, so it comes in handy for graphics performance comparison. The LG is powered by a Tegra 2 dual-core, used in many Honeycomb tablets, so it is also a good reference.

Basically the Tegra 2, with two A9 cores, wipes to floor with A8-based single cores. Even the SGX 540 proves vastly superior to the SGX 530 graphics core used on the A1. Frankly the figures are not surprising, but merely serve to show the pace of progress in the ARM world. With 28nm parts and A15 just around the corner, the future looks very promising indeed.

So what about the A1 then? Well, we did not have a chance to test the Kindle Fire or Nook, but we can safely say that they would eat Lenovo’s lunch, as they both feature dual-core A9 processors.

Oddly enough, in spite of antiquated hardware, the A1 delivers excellent battery life. Under moderate load, including browsing, video and some Angry Birds, the A1 managed about six hours, which was surprisingly good. Lenovo promises seven hours of battery life in a browsing-only scenario and its estimate is not far off the mark. If you use the A1 as an e-book reader, with barely any backlight, it will drain less than 10 percent of its battery per hour. It takes roughly three and a half hours to fully recharge the battery. It might sound painfully slow, but all Android phones and tablets are plagued by the same issue, as USB simply lacks amps.

Conclusion

The Lenovo A1 is a mixed bag to say the least and frankly I’m not sure what to make of it.

Just looking at the price and spec sheet would make me slap a Top Value award at the end of the review and get it over with. A brand name Android tablet with 16GB of storage, great battery life and GPS for €154? This makes it cheaper than some e-book readers, let alone proper tablets.

However, it is impossible to overlook its shortcomings. Clearly, it lacks processing power, but even so it offers a decent user experience for the money, so this sounds like a fair trade-off. The poor screen on the other hand is a major issue, even for a value product.

In the end, it is really a matter of personal choice. If you are on a tight budget, the A1 will do the job. Also, if you prefer storage or GPS functionality over performance, particularly in games, it also makes sense. Basically, if you are interested, make sure you go down to your local shop and see the screen in action before you reach for your wallet. Maybe it’s just me, some people might not mind the limited viewing angles as much as I do.

On another note, the A1 seems like the perfect choice for kids, too. It is dirt cheap, robust, it has a couple of cameras to play around with and it is available in white, pink and blue.

Amazon’s Kindle Fire seems to be gaining quite a bit of traction and analysts expect it to beat all other Android based tablets in the last quarter of 2012.

It sounds pretty impressive for a device which has gone on sale just recently and it is not even available in quite a few markets. IHS believes Amazon will manage to ship 3.9 million units by the end of the year, seizing a 13.8 percent market share. Samsung’s Galaxy Tab series tablets will rank third, with a 4.8 percent share. This gives you an idea of how other Android tablets are doing on the market.

Due to the somewhat unexpected success of the new Kindle tablet, IHS revised its overall Q4 tablet sales estimate to 64.7 million units, up 7.7 percent. At $199, the Fire is undoubtedly a good deal, but in case you are in the market for an affordable content oriented tablet, Barns & Noble’s Nook is also worth considering.

In addition to the newely revealed Nook Tablet that should give Amazon's Fire a run for its money, Barnes & Noble is apparently preparing to go hard against the entire lineup of Amazon e-readers by slashing the price of the original Nook Color to US $199 and by introducing the new Nook Simple Touch with a US $99 price tag.

There aren't any detailed specs regarding the new Nook Simple Touch other than the fact that it will be a "new and improved" e-reader. The only thing that was leaked is the new E-Ink display that will feature a 25 percent faster page turns and Best Text Technology that will bring crispest "paper-like" reading even in bright sun. Barnes & Noble was also keen to announce that Nook Simple Touch will be ad-free device.

Another move from Barnes & Noble is the price slashing of the original Nook Tablet that will now sell for US $199 that will put Nook Table in line with Amazon's new Fire.

Of course, all the juicy details will be known on November 7th, when B&N plans the press announcement and pre-order, while the actual devices should hit retail/e-tail stores on November 16th.

During the period when Apple was shipping iPads starting at $499 / €479 and Google was working hard on Honeycomb Android 3.0, we were wondering pricing of future tablets.

By late 2010 and early 2011 we had a chance to check out a few tablets based on new dual core CPUs, including Tegra 2, TI Omap. We again raised a question about pricing, telling all our industry partners that they have to endow their tablets with iPad-like quality but get them out at significantly lower prices.

In one of these conversations, I expressed my vision of the tablet market in a few years where I said that once they drop to $199, I will have at least three of them mounted on my apartment walls. One of them would end up on the kitchen wall, one in the bathroom, one in the living room and one can’t forget the bedroom tablet. The idea is that you pick a tablet that’s near you and do some basic web browsing or simple gaming. This was my vision in late 2010, early 2011.

It looks like I was not far off as with Kindle Fire, we almost got to that point. Kindle Fire can offer Amazon market, has a bunch of nice content, can play movies, open an ebook and get you to your favourite web page. This is pretty much everything that most of us need.

Early in 2011 we had a chance to play with Barns and Noble Nook, and this $250 + tax device was a step in right direction, but without hacking it, you could not have any Android Market apps on it. This was the only wrong thing about it.

This gets us to Motorola Xoom, which launched at $799 for its 3G version with Verison. This money can buy four Kindle Fire tablets, something that I need to fulfill the digital home dream. I still don’t know if anyone is planning to make some wall docking stations that can charge these four $199 tablets placed on walls, but there should be a way to make something, if you are not afraid to play with some tools.

Now people in Europe are facing two major problems. First one is that Kindle Fire is unlikely to ship in this year to the old continent and the second one is that $199 will probably jump to more than €199 ($265.6 with today’s exchange rate) which gets you to a slightly higher cost than what US customers end up paying.

The catch is that $199 shipped from Amazon (etail) stays at this price. If you buy this device in California Best Buy you have to pay an average of 9 percent sales tax and the same device in retail ends up at roughly $217. In Europe the VAT (Value Added Tax. Mehrwertsteuer ger.) is always included in the final price, no matter if you are buying from etail or retail. This tax varies from country to country and it averages at 20 percent. Well, we guess someone has to pay for social/medical insurance and all these bailouts after all.

According to the post over at Tech Crunch, Amazon's Kindle Tablet is very much real and should be ready to storm the market sometimes this fall, most probably by the end of November. Amazon Kindle Tablet, as rumorville is calling it, is a 7-inch, Android driven, capacitive touchscreen tablet will apparently have a US $250 price tag.

The rumors regarding the Amazon tablet have been around for quite some time and it is no wonder that Amazon wants a piece of this lucrative market. According to the report, Amazon managed to push the price down to a reasonable US $250, pretty much the same price that Barnes & Noble wants for its Nook Color.

According to the same report, the device is pretty much finished as Amazon is working on the software. Although it will be based on quite well known Android system, it will be massively overhauled in order to be something that Amazon wants. It could be based on some Android 2.x version but that will not be important due to massive change of the OS that Amazon is planning.

As far as the specs go, current rumors claim that the Amazon Kindle Tablet will feature 6GB of internal storage, SD card port, WiFi, probably a version with 3G as well, and it will lack any sort of camera, front or rear one.

The 7-inch Kindle Tablet should be ready by the end of November while the 10-inch one is rumoured for Q1 2012.